Seeing Like a Feminist by Nivedita Menon

Author:Nivedita Menon [Menon, Nivedita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184757705
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-11-30T18:30:00+00:00

SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT THE WORKPLACE

Sexual harassment at the workplace was recognized by a landmark judgment of the Supreme Court (1997, Vishakha vs. State of Rajasthan) that laid down guidelines for all employers to protect women employees from sexual harassment. The judgment declared sexual harassment at the workplace to be a violation of the fundamental rights to life, equality and the right to practise any profession, as guaranteed in the Constitution. The guidelines defined various dimensions of sexual harassment in terms of ‘unwelcome’ conduct of specific kinds, the operative notion being that of consent. The Court also specified the composition of the complaints committees. The moving force behind these guidelines was the intervention of several feminist NGOs and women’s groups after the rape of Bhanwari Devi, who was raped as punishment for carrying out government-sanctioned work, as we have seen. In the years since these guidelines, several universities have come up with carefully-formulated sexual harassment codes, as have some NGOs and some private-sector employers. The codes put in place by the latter two kinds of organizations are uneven in character, depending on the presence within the organization of feminists with a perspective on sexual harassment. Where such a perspective is lacking, the committees and policy become just one more employer-generated disciplinary mechanism against employees, especially since, in most such cases, there are no trade unions.

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